MavEtJu's Distorted View of the World

The Australian Broadcast Corperation has been a long time broadcaster
of the Docter Who television series. During the first seasons of
the new Doctor Who series, about 2005 or so, it wasn't possible to
watch the episodes via the Internet, unless you went the Bittorrent
way. The ABC experimented this season with making the episode
available at the same time as the BBC broadcasted it, which is
Sunday mornings for us, a week before it was broadcasted via the
television.

But why would you want to download the episodes if you know they
are broadcasted later anyway?

The technical answers are simple: Because it is possible. Internet
traffic is cheap, specially if about two thirds of my cap of 150
Gb per month is generally unused. On the ABC I can see the non-HD
version, on the Internet I can find the HD version.

The social answers are about the "feel included" issue: Initially
the delay between the availability on the Internet and the broadcast
at the ABC was long, weeks if not months. To their credit, last
year the ABC reduced the broadcast delay compared with the BBC to
one week. But considering that the global social interaction on the
Internet happens "now", downloading the episodes to watch them now
and be able to communicate on the social media is the only way to
not have to feel left out.

And the last is the old argument of "I want to watch it when I can",
and added the post 2008 "and where I can". When it is broadcasted,
you need to be at home, available, not interupted by various house
members of all sizes. The video recorder and digital recorder are
a solution for this, but then you still are limited to watch it on
your television. These days with iDevices and laptops you don't
want to be limited to that anymore. The iView service overcomes
this issue partly, allowing you to see it on any device, but it
still needs a stable network, not something which 3G on a train
trip can provide.

So... How did this experiment from the ABC go for me? For starters,
I have watched all episodes via iView and haven't downloaded a
single one via Bittorrent. Just like the previous seasons, I have
seen them all at least twice to fully understand the story line.
I watched the first one on Sunday, sometimes in the morning after
breakfast, sometimes after the kids were brought to bed, without
having to spend two-three hours first to download them. Unlike the
previous seasons, I haven't watched it on TV this time; That really
was a new thing.

So, for me the experiment was successful and I hope that the ABC
will continue this programming.